StarCraft 2 Previews, Reviews, News, Screenshots, and Info

[Phistar]

gahhh! i can't wait til this fricking comes out!

from what i know, it should be released later on this year!

i'll post more information on this as soon as i hear it and stuff . . .

definitely will be the best PC game ever created for the next 1234567890 years to come!

i've been playing StarCraft 1 since 8th grade and still play it til this day! omgahhh! can't wait! yayyy!

but here are some screenshots to keep you SHOCKED and AMAZED

[Raider1one]

Designed to be the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game, StarCraft II will feature the return of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with Blizzard's signature approach to game balance. Each race will be further distinguished from the others, with several new units and new gameplay mechanics, as well as new abilities for some of the classic StarCraft units that will be making a reappearance in the game. StarCraft II will also feature a custom 3D-graphics engine with realistic physics and the ability to render several large, highly detailed units and massive armies on-screen simultaneously.

StarCraft II will include a unique single-player campaign, as well as fast-paced online play through an upgraded version of Blizzard's renowned online gaming service, Battle.net. In addition, the game will come with a powerful, full-featured map editor that will put the same tools used by Blizzard's designers into the hands of players.
Blizzard is developing StarCraft II for simultaneous release on the Windows and Macintosh PC platforms. Further information about the game, including details on the single-player, multiplayer, and map-editor features, as well as system requirements, pricing, and availability, will be announced in the months ahead.

From http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=50345

[Raider1one]

StarCraft 2: The Zerg

Blizzard ended months of Starcraft II silence at its headquarters today. We hadn't gotten the slightest morsel of new info on the famed developer's rabidly anticipated strategy sequel since BlizzCon in August of 2007, but now we've finally gotten our hands on the new and improved zerg, the third and last of Starcraft II's factions to be revealed to the press. After sliming our way through numerous multiplayer games with the zerg, we can say that our previous experience with the terran and protoss factions in Starcraft II still holds. Everything old here is new again, which is to say that the zerg feel startlingly similar to their counterparts in the first game. Of course, when you're building on arguably the best strategy game ever made, that's really not such a bad thing.
Before we got our hands on the game, Blizzard showed us a brief cinematic movie that depicted the zerg's conquest of the galaxy. This short movie was accompanied by a voice-over from Kerrigan, the zerg's iconic and mutated human-hybrid queen. Though we didn't see what physical form she'll take in the final game, Kerrigan spoke extensively about the zerg's several-years-long absence from the galactic scene and the "evolving" that's occurred in that interim. She concluded by saying that the zerg are about to become much greater and referred to a "final metamorphosis" that's only just begun. Clearly this portends ominously for the events of the single-player campaign.


As before, winning with the zerg is all about superior numbers.


Too bad, then, that Blizzard wasn't addressing any aspect of Starcraft II's storyline today. But that's OK; we had enough to take in just absorbing all of the changes to the zerg's tech tree. Let's start with what's the same, though. The zerg will use a building model nearly identical to that of the first game. All zerg units are birthed from the larvae that will spawn automatically from your hatcheries, and all structures grow out of the basic drone worker units. Like the terrans and protoss, the zerg will also collect crystal and vespene gas resources in the traditional manner, and you can build structures only on the ooze-like purple creep that spreads out around a zerg hatchery.
Where the zerg differ is in their specific lineup of units and tech-tree progression, most of which is new since the first Starcraft. Some of the basic units, like the zergling and hydralisk, function more or less the same, but Blizzard says more than half the units are new, and even most returning ones have some sort of modification. There's a new ground attack unit called the roach that regenerates health at incredible speed. Many enemy units simply can't kill the roach in one-on-one combat because the roach heals faster than the opponent's ability to dish out damage. The only real way to deal with a flood of roaches is with focused heavy fire, and we found a mass of them to be devastating against an unprepared enemy.
There's a devious new support unit called the infestor that can move while burrowed underground, and it can unleash some of its nasty abilities without having to surface. Taking a cue from Blizzard's early presentation, we tried having a handful of burrowed infestors sneak right underneath an enemy's base defenses, and then had them unleash their infestation ability once in the middle of the base. This overtakes one structure, preventing it from producing units and spawning a host of infested terran marines from it to cause havoc. Though these zombie marines don't do a lot of damage, they made for the perfect distraction. While our enemy was busy trying to handle the mess within his own base, we brought our main attack right to his front door and waltzed on through. Burrowed infestors are easily spotted by any sort of detection, so you'll have to be careful where you take them.


The roach and the infestor are just two of the zerg's nasty new units.


By far our favorite zerg unit was the queen, of which you can only make one. There were queens in the original Starcraft, but she's changed so much here that she might as well be new. The queen is a large defensive unit that skulks around your base and provides all sorts of interesting defensive abilities. She can build tiny turrets on the creep almost instantly, and then a detecting supplemental unit called the shrieker that increases the range of those turrets. You can make the queen evolve and increase in size, too, which confers more abilities. After evolving, the queen can infect a small part of the creep; tunnel from the creep to any other zerg building on the entire map; or even heal a zerg building for most of the value of its health. She's also a formidable melee fighter when it comes to base defense. It seems as if the queen will be a deadly unit in the hands of a player with strong micromanagement skills.
Some of the old, familiar units are quite different, too. The overlord is no longer a detecting unit, and it can't carry other units for transport. Instead, it can infect resources such as minerals and make them inaccessible, and it can spit creep onto most parts of the map. The overlord can also evolve into another flying unit called the overseer that can detect hidden enemies. The bull-like ultralisk now has an area-of-effect element added to its already considerable melee attack, which we found especially potent when tackling our enemies' base defenses.
True to its word, Blizzard has made the zerg gameplay all about overwhelming numbers, similar to the way it was in the first game. We can't speak to the skill of our opponents today--fellow members of the international games press, mostly--but we found that the key to victory was generally to crank out as many roaches, hydralisks, ultralisks, and other creepy-crawlies as we could and simply win through attrition. And though we were no doubt playing on top-of-the-line gaming hardware, we were at least heartened to see that the frame rate didn't suffer an iota, even when we flooded the screen with scores of units engaged in frenzied battle.
Blizzard has made a lot of other additions to Starcraft II's gameplay since we last saw it. There are now high-yield minerals on the map, which are yellow in color and offer greater stores of resources than the blue kind. There are also destructible obstacles such as rocks now blocking many choke points; you can attack and demolish these roadblocks, but they take a lot of work to get rid of. Similarly, there will be other obstacles like trees and shrubs that will block your line of sight, which lets units hide behind them. Lastly, we noticed a few of the new xel'naga observation towers, which you can activate by touching with a single unit. These will give you a big radius of sight around them while active, though they'll shut down once you move your unit away.


Blizzard will likely spend months just balancing the three factions against each other.


It's worth noting that just about anything you read about here is subject to change before Starcraft II finally ships, whenever that is. Blizzard reps talked about one gameplay mechanic in the build we've played today that has changed drastically three or four times in the last two weeks. The company is famous for iterating and rebalancing ad infinitum until the gameplay is spot-on, so what we played today may vary significantly in a few ways, or a lot of ways. We hope at least that the basic zerg framework is pretty well locked down now, though; we were quite happy to see some grotesque old friends back in the fray after all these years.
-from GameSpot.com

[Raider1one]

StarCraft 2: The Terrans

After quickly blazing through a couple of matches of Starcraft II today right after BlizzCon's opening--because we're just that excited about the game--we hunkered down to spend some more quality time with the terrans, one of the three factions returning from 1998's original real-time strategy classic. The terrans always seemed like the most well-rounded of Starcraft's races to us, next to the zerg's swarm-like tendencies and the protoss' weird psionic abilities. It's important to note that Blizzard is simply trying out new ideas with Starcraft II's design, so anything that we played in today's demo may have gone straight out the window by the time the final game hits shelves. But so far, we're intrigued by the many new units and abilities that Blizzard has added to the terrans' repertoire.


This is Starcraft II's terran tech tree, as it currently stands.


Of course, basic units like the marine and the medic are back, though you'll immediately notice the firebat is missing. Other units haven't been completely removed so much as replaced by new, improved versions. The old goliath mech has given way to the new viking, which acts just like a goliath--until you research and enable its transformation ability, which turns it into a jet that can get it across otherwise impassable barriers. Another unit which has no respect for variable elevation is the reaper, which you hire from a bar with a female night elf dancing on top of it. These mercenaries build almost instantly, since you're just hiring them instead of training them, and in addition to being able to jump up and down to higher and lower terrain, it can now throw a timed bomb and escape the area before it explodes. We saw a large group of these reapers all throw out bombs at the same time to do massive damage to an enemy base before beating a hasty retreat.
The terrans have quite a bit of air support in Starcraft II, at least as it stands right now. The predator is a new flyer that can only attack other aerial units, but it can also take on an intercept mode where it will attempt to shoot down incoming enemy fire (presumably things like missiles). Everyone's favorite the battlecruiser is here again, but this time it won't simply default to the incredibly powerful, single-shot Yamato cannon like it did in the first game. Sure, the Yamato is still here, but this time you'll get to choose how to specialize each individual cruiser, between the Yamato and the new plasma turrets. The latter will produce a flurried cluster of beams that can decimate ground units, from what we saw of them.
The banshee is a basic fighter that can attack both air and ground units, and it can cloak as well. Then there's the nomad, which can't attack directly but has a lot of support abilities. It can instantly repair a mechanical unit for a large amount of hit points, primarily, and it also has an electromagnetic pulse weapon that damages the energy of any enemy units nearby. Lastly, the nomad can lay down a damage suppression field at a target location that significantly cuts down the amount of damage dealt by enemies within the field.


The terrans will have a wealth of new defensive capabilities, though it won't help these guys much.


But the Thor is probably our favorite unit on the terran side so far. This absolute bruiser of a mech is so enormous, it currently must be built by an SCV rather than being produced at the factory. The Thor stomps around like an oversized viking, trashing air and ground units with its main guns. You can also research an upgrade for the Thor which gives it long-range artillery strike capability, and though the mech must become stationary to deliver this attack, you'll get an attack similar to a siege tank's siege mode in terms of destructive force. Currently, the Thor does have one nearly crippling weakness: It has to stop and turn on an axis, and rather slowly at that, in order to change direction. Skilled micromanagers will be able to dance quicker units around the Thor and hit it from behind without fear of counterattack, so if the Thor's movement remains like this for the final game, you'll want to bring along a defensive contingent of smaller units when you trot out this big daddy.
The Thor and the improved battlecruiser may be the most visually impressive new terran units, but terran structures have actually received a surprising number of upgrades and new abilities. You'll now be able to salvage most buildings and recover their full resource cost (which results in the destruction of the building, natch), but once you've issued the salvage command, you can't cancel it. Supply depots--the terran equivalent of the farm--have also taken on an important new defensive role. These buildings can be lowered below ground level, which is represented visually with a trap door of sorts opening up, and the entire structure literally lowering itself into the ground. This will allow you to build a solid barrier of adjacent depots and use them as a blockade around your base, while still allowing you to lower them and allow your own units through. This won't be a catch-all defense against rushes, though, since the smallest units, like zealots, marines, and zerglings, will now be able to squeeze through the cracks between even fully adjacent depots.
Like in the original Starcraft, a building's unit production queue still tops out at five. But the terrans have received an interesting new ability that they can apply to barracks, factories, and starports which will let them maximize their production capability--at the expense of some advanced technology, that is. For each of those buildings, you'll be able to build one of two add-on structures, the reactor or the tech lab, to extend their functions. A reactor will essentially give you two production queues on the same building, so you could have two marines building at the same barracks at one time, for instance. There will still be some limits--you can only make one siege tank at a time, since it's so big--but this will still seriously help in situations where you need a lot of units, but building another barracks or factory is cost-prohibitive.
The tech lab, on the other hand, is a more traditional unit enhancer that will enable you to research extra functionality to your units. These aren't just frivolous add-ons, though; the barracks' tech lab will give you the marines' stim pack ability and upgraded armor, while the factory's tech lab will grant access to such necessities as the siege tank's siege mode, and the new viking's flight mode (which lets this bipedal robotic attacker transform into a flyer for aerial assault). Both the tech lab and the reactor are quite cheap to produce; currently, each costs well under 100 minerals and vespene gas. They're also interchangeable; if you build a tech lab on a barracks, you could lift off that barracks, land a factory in its place, and the tech lab will attach itself to the factory automatically.


This command center might not be doomed if it had upgraded to a planetary fortress.


We noted an interesting new feature for the starport which allows you to turn it into a starbase. This basically makes it look like a gigantic starship (much larger than a battlecruiser), and functionally, it becomes a mobile unit producer. You could park your starbase just out of range of an enemy base and pump out aerial units for an assault. Finally, the command center itself is quite a bit more capable this time around. Instead of building a comsat station add-on as in the original game, you can now convert the building directly into a surveillance station to gain the ability to do a satellite sweep, which again lets you reveal a small part of the map for a few seconds. But you can instead upgrade the command center to a planetary fortress, which looks exactly as imposing as it sounds. This upgrade will give a sizeable boost to the building's armor level, and it will add a mean-looking gigantic cannon to the top of the fortress to give it proper defensive capabilities.
On the surface, Starcraft II certainly looks a lot like its predecessor. But our in-depth gameplay time with the terran faction today at BlizzCon indicated just how much the designers are doing to revitalize the gameplay within the three existing factions. We're looking forward to seeing what similar changes are made to the hive-like zerg, which Blizzard says it's just now beginning to work on. We'll bring you any and all coverage on Starcraft II that we can obtain between now and its far-off release date.

[Raider1one]

StarCraft 2: The Protoss

Blizzard has two massive areas devoted to hands on with Starcraft II on the Blizzcon showfloor. The highly anticipated sequel to the classic RTS is being shown in two flavors, single player and multiplayer. We'll be attacking the demo in chunks as Blizz has opted to show off a meaty chunk of the game. The single player demo is a timed 20 minute level set on Shakuuras, pitting Terran and Protoss forces against each other. Protoss are charged with obliterating the Terran forces while the Terrans are tasked with wiping out the Protoss.
The demo features three difficulties, easy, normal, and hard. We picked normal and the Protoss and hopped in. The demo features a brief real-time cinematic that offers a quick flythrough of the Terran base and fills you in on your task of wiping out their forces. Once that's done you're at the Protoss base and ready to go. We immediately scoped out the tech tree by hitting F12 and sussed out exactly how to build the new units. The basics of the tree were faithfully laid out according to the original game with new structures added to the mix to accommodate the new units added to the Protoss forces. We snapped a pic of the tech tree to give you an idea of what it currently looks like, though bear in mind many people will greatly obsess over every detail in the game so it will likely change to some degree.

This is the Protoss tech tree in Starcraft II as it currently stands.


The Protoss forces in the demo start out with a batch of nearly all of the basic structures up, requiring you to build the last two and the full suite of advanced structures. Although the tree is in line with what was seen in the original game, there are some notable absences such as the shield battery and arbiter tribunal. New structures included the null circuit, dark obelisk, phase prism, and twilight council buildings which all tied into the new units. We tried our hand with as many of them as we could build and were intrigued by what we played. Null circuit buildings are one part of the equation to let you summon the observers to be constructed. The dark obelisk allows you to make dark templars, and phase prisms let you do create the mighty colossus, a killer land unit shown previously. The twilight council lets you create immortals. In addition the stargates let you summon the new phoenix and warp ray craft as well as the old standby, the carrier. The mothership has been tweaked since its Korean debut where it was presented as a unique unit. You can now summon more than one which comes handy. The downside is, if you're not careful, you'll lose it fast.
Overall the Protoss handled well and surprised us. In the demo they seemed faster and tougher than we remember them. The zealots are tough and handle themselves well on the battlefield. The larger ground units, stalkers and immortals, were powerful against certain units and ably stood their own. The templars, once powered up via the various upgrades you'll order up for them, are powerful adversaries. The dark templars and their natural cloak made them key for sending out to the various observatories on the battlefield to help widen your field of view. However we have to say our heart belongs to the colossus, carrier, and mothership combo. The colossus is a devastating land unit that cuts through ground troops nicely. Our personal favorite from the original game, the carrier, still kicks much tail. As before you could trick it out with a max of eight interceptor vehicles that shoot our and blast anything around it. We're especially taken by the auto casting option for the interceptors, allowing you to keep your carrier fully stocked. The mothership is pretty slick, offering some devastating attacks that take out pesky structures like Terran anti-aircraft batteries, with ease. However, as all the units in the game, it has its vulnerabilities. For example, it doesn't appear to deal well with mobs of terrain infantry. As we noted in our earlier general hands-on, there have been a number of tweaks to the game that have improved the game's overall handling which has helped the Protoss feel that much more polished.
The visuals in the game, though not final, are shaping up to be a smart shift to 3D for the series. The various units are looking great thanks to a detailed transition to 3D for all the units. The various Protoss ground units look sharp and are enhanced with various effects for their shields and, in the case of dark templars, cloaking fields. The larger stalkers, immortals, and the ripping cool colossus. The aircraft are equally cool with an impressive array of animated elements and effects for shields and weapons fire. Overall the look of the units and structures is in line with the aesthetics of the previous game but given a stylized twist for the jump to 3D that works well.
Audio in the demo was faithful to the excellent effects and audio heard in the original. We didn't scrutinize every single Protoss effect but our overall impression was good. The returning effects and the new ones mesh well. The added filters and effects beef everything up and give the action a good amount of kick. We're especially pleased by the sharpness of the weapons fire and the various sound bytes from all the units and forces which make the destruction and mayhem all the more satisfying.
Based on this tiny snippet of the game StarCraft II appears to be well on its way to ably updating its classic predecessor. So far the game is retaining the feel of the original, albeit with some very slick tweaks and additions, while adding a cool, stylized look. Best of all, the game's speed isn’t an issue (which was a concern of ours when we heard about the shift to 3D). As fans of the original we're excited by the promise the game's displayed. The gameplay is walking a fine line between being faithful to the original while still feeling fresh and the visuals keep the action stylish but don't bog down performance. If you're a fan of StarCraft this is all good news. Well, except for the fact that Blizzard's giving their "it will ship when it's ready" line for the game's release. In any case StarCraft II appears primed to deliver some blistering hotness when Blizzard unleashes it. Look for more on the game from Blizzcon and in the months to come.

[Phistar]

here are two in-game demos i've been watching for the past 20-25 minutes!

just simply fucking amazing! can't wait til it's finally released... hopefully soon!

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

[rocdhog]

This game does look pretty good.

[Raider1one]

this game will be tight.. sux its only for pc